01전성기에서 나락으로, 그리고 다시 일어서기
크리스 우드의 이야기는 골프라는 스포츠가 신체만큼이나 정신을 좌우한다는 것을 여실히 보여준다. 2016년, 이 영국 선수는 BMW PGA 챔피언십 우승으로 세계 골프 무대의 주인공이었다. OWGR 상위 50에 안주하며 라이더컵까지 경험했던 그는 당시 경력의 정점에 있었다.
하지만 2016년 후반부터 그의 스윙에 변화가 생겼다. 처음엔 미묘했다. 볼을 더 약하게 치고 있다는 것, 바람 속에서의 위력이 떨어진다는 것. 몇 년에 걸쳐 코치들과 여러 스윙 이론들을 시도했지만, 진정한 해결책은 오지 않았다. 2019년에는 상황이 급악화됐다. 드라이버를 백에 넣지 못하고 다시 찾아온 자신의 우승지 웬트워스의 BMW PGA 챔피언십에 참가했을 정도였다.
스윙의 문제는 정신의 문제로 악화되었다. 2019년 이후 우드는 토너먼트 주간 내내 24시간 불안감과 공포심에 시달렸다. 잠을 이루지 못했고, 그것이 악순환이 되었다. 더 연습해야 한다는 강박은 오히려 그를 자신의 스윙에서 더욱 멀어지게 만들었다.
02코비드와 가족, 그리고 깨달음
코비드-19 팬데믹 동안 우드는 거의 경기를 뛰지 않았다. DP World Tour가 선수 등급을 동결했기에, 그는 플레이하지 않아도 되는 상황에 처했다. 이 시간 동안 우드는 아내 베타니와 함께 하루에 한 시간씩 산책을 했다. 베타니는 모든 순간을 경청했다. 그녀가 우드의 심정을 들어주는 첫 번째 기회가 된 것이다. 당시 두 아이(현재는 네 명)가 있었던 우드의 가족은 집에서의 시간을 소중했다.
팬데믹이 끝난 후에도 상황은 나아지지 않았다. 2022년 시즌 종료 약 6주 전, 우드는 DP World Tour의 의료팀 책임자 팀 스완과 대면했다. 그 순간 그는 자신이 겪고 있는 심각한 정신적 고민을 솔직하게 드러냈다. 그 뒤 2023년 1월 남아프리카 HotelPlanner Tour 경기 중 그는 부모님에게 전화해 눈물을 흘렸다. 부모님은 일성으로 말했다: '집으로 돌아와.'
"나는 불안감과 공포심, 그리고 긴장으로 가득했다. 토너먼트 주간 내내 24시간 불안했고, 잠을 이루지 못했다. 그것이 악순환이 되었다." 2023년 투어에서 벗어난 우드의 심경을 담은 말이다.
03회복과 재구성
우드는 2023년 투어에서 벗어난 후 번아웃으로부터의 회복과 불안정의 치료에 집중했다. 2025년 늦겨울 MENA Tour Q-School을 우승했고, 이어 여덟 경기 중 세 경기를 우승하며 MENA Golf Tour 랭킹 1위로 HotelPlanner Tour 정규 시즌 자격을 획득했다.
현재 우드와 함께 일하는 코치들은 제임스 마틴과 에드 코글란이다. 이들의 접근은 명확했다: "더 이상의 트라우마는 없다(No more trauma)." 과거의 강요적 연습이 아닌, 편하고 확신 있는 샷만을 선택하는 방식으로 전환했다. 6번 아이언과 퍼터로 시작해 천천히 클럽의 범위를 늘려나갔다. 현재 그는 실패를 받아들이고, 더 도전적인 연습을 감행할 수 있게 되었다.
2026년 이탈리안 챌린지 오픈 우승이 그 증거다. 우드는 HotelPlanner Tour 로드 투 말로르카 랭킹에서 5위까지 올라섰다. DP World Tour 카드 복구라는 최종 목표를 향해, 그는 차곡차곡 준비하고 있다.
04가족이 주는 동기
우드의 딸은 "트로피 파티"를 하고 싶다고 했다. 드레스를 입을 수 있는 이유 때문이다. 그의 아이들은 아직 아버지가 토너먼트에서 우승하는 모습을 본 적이 없다. 이는 우드에게 가장 강력한 동기다.
우드는 "나는 골프를 사랑하는 것을 잃지 않았다. 단지 직면하기가 힘들었을 뿐"이라고 말했다. 암울한 날들도 많았지만, 그 안에는 언제나 "멈춤이라는 선택은 없었다"는 의지가 있었다. 자신이 볼 수 있는 샷들이 있다면, 언젠가는 그것을 칠 수 있을 것이라는 믿음 말이다.
"지금 터널의 끝이 보인다. 정신적으로도, 게임적으로도. 내 잠재력은 예전보다 훨씬 크다. 현재 내가 하고 있는 것들이 훨씬 더 멀리 나아가 있다." 우드의 현재 심경이 담긴 말이다.
05Original (English) — DP World Tour
After a long spell in the golfing doldrums, a rejuvenated Chris Wood is taking huge strides towards a return to the DP World Tour in a compelling comeback story.
In 2016, Englishman had the golfing world at his feet. He won the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on his way to becoming a Ryder Cup player and was comfortably sat inside the top 50 on the Official World Golf Ranking.
But even then doubts about his game were beginning to surface, doubts which led to a level of anxiety that forced him take a break from the game in 2023.
Now, having won the Italian Challenge Open on Sunday in his first start of the HotelPlanner Tour's season, the Englishman is enjoying a revival.
It was almost a year ago to the day that Wood recorded a top ten at the Turkish Airlines Open - his first since a runner-up at the 2018 KLM Open.
But despite that sign of promise, he missed the cut at DP World Tour Qualifying School and made the decision to continue to rebuild his career on the MENA Tour.
After first winning their own Q-School in late 2025, he then won three events across eight starts to earn playing status on the HotelPlanner Tour by winning the MENA Golf Tour Rankings in March.
Victory in Italy lifts Wood to fifth on the HotelPlanner Tour's Road to Mallorca Rankings, with his form putting him on track for a return to wider prominence once again.
Here, speaking to the DP World Tour in a remarkably candid Player Blog ahead of the 2025 Soudal Open, the affable Englishman spoke about his descent into anxiety, his recovery with the help of his wife Bethany, his future ambitions at the time and how he never considered quitting the game he loves.
I was just riddled with anxiety and fear and tension from the moment I left home for a tournament. It was 24/7 during tournament weeks, I was extremely anxious and not sleeping and it becomes a vicious cycle
I started to feel my swing not becoming my swing towards the end of 2016. I had a year of playing the best golf of my career but I just felt it started to drift towards the end of 2016 where I started hitting the ball a bit weaker. I knew where it was going but it was weak and the ball fight wasn't great so in any windy conditions it started to get a bit harder. I always thought I would only move up the leaderboard in the wind because I had an ability to hit a good ball flight and it deteriorated a little bit from there. I felt like I needed to improve that situation and to improve myself as a golfer but for two or three years I just stayed where I was with the odd feel that worked. I saw a bit of progress but looking back they were more like plasters.
In 2019 I was working with my coach and I started to develop some severely wide shots, particularly with my driver, to the point where I didn't carry a driver in the bag at Wentworth at the BMW PGA Championship in 2019, just three years after I'd won it, that's how quickly it got from one point to another.
From then, I was just riddled with anxiety and fear and tension from the moment I left home for a tournament. It was 24/7 during tournament weeks, I was extremely anxious and not sleeping and it becomes a vicious cycle. You're constantly draining energy but at that point I was hitting balls like I needed to do it more to make my swing better. I felt like I needed to do it more and there's a saying with golfers: the secret's in the dirt - golf is practice until your hands bleed. But I was in a point where I was not really connected to myself in my swing.
I was rightly trusting my coaches but I wasn't questioning them. I was going with them and I needed to be stronger and be able to say: 'actually, that doesn't quite feel right to me, is there another way we could do this?'. I really liked the coaches and they'd worked with some great players so I kept doing it but it gradually took me away from my golf swing. I had that combined with the mental side of things and it was a difficult situation.
I hardly played during Covid, I couldn't face it. With the Tour freezing the categories, I didn't have to play and I was starting to recognise those feelings that I was getting in 2019: the anxiety, the fear, the tension and we weren't directly affected at home so we had a really good time. At home my wife Bethany and I had two young children, we've got four now: Jonah, Lottie, Toby and Kasper, but we had two at the time and every day when we'd go for our hour walk which we were allowed to do, Bethany would be the one who was the listener every single day. That was probably the first time I was really talking about how I was feeling about things which was obviously extremely hard for her to listen to and to hear. For someone who has always encouraged me to be playing and then for me to turn around and say I'm not going to be playing, I don't want to be playing and these are the reasons why, my wife has always been someone I tell everything so she has been in the picture the entire time. I can remember those walks incredibly well based on the strength of those conversations. I'd then do two hours of practice every afternoon and it was a good balance. But I was still thinking I had to keep practising and I was not really improving. I should have stopped there but I didn't realise what I was dealing with at that point.
I'm someone who has got quite a bit of fight in me, I never give in so I kept going until I lost my card in 2022. But about six weeks before the end of the season, I sat down with DP World Tour doctor Tim Swan and just opened up and revealed I'd been struggling. From there the Tour medical team have been great, they put me in touch with the right people but then I played in South Africa on the HotelPlanner Tour in January 2023 and I just broke down while speaking to my parents on the phone and they just both said 'come home'.
That was the point where I knew I could not face it any more and I knew I needed to step away and deal with it correctly. I then spent a lot of time working on the burnout I had suffered because of the cycle I had put myself in and then I started to deal with the anxiety.
My daughter wants a trophy party so she can wear a party dress. My children have not seen me win a tournament, so that's a huge motivator for me
There was never once a part of me that thought that I was done, that the break that I took from the game in 2023 would be permanent. You have days where you're feeling severely down, there's no other word for it but depression. But the fire in my belly has never gone away, I've always believed that I've got the ability to play. I've always been able to see the shots, I've just not been able to hit them. I feel like as long as I can see the shots, at some point I'll be able to hit them again. And that's what I suppose has kept me so motivated. I watch golf on TV and I can see the shots, I've got those shots so while there were really difficult days, the overwhelming feeling was stopping was never on the table. I don't think I ever fell out of love with golf. I just couldn't face it.
I'm now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel both mentally and with my game. I've been working with coaches James Martin and Ed Coughlan on swing and performance and the mental side for close to two years now and from the start both of them have said the number one thing is: 'no more trauma. We do not add any more trauma to what you've suffered over the last few years. You've had enough trauma'. There were times on the HotelPlanner Tour last season where I would be thinking about hitting a tee-shot with driver three holes before I had to hit it and that is just building anxiety. We now just say: hit the shot that you see. So if I'm not comfortable, I won't hit it, I'll hit the shot I see which I can fully commit to.
When I first started trying to get back onto the golf course in 2023, my coach decided we should just start with a six iron and a putter and go and play nine holes. That was my first time back on the course and that was brilliant because there isn't really any trauma for me with a six iron. I started there and we worked our way up and it's progressed over the last couple of years when I've been able to handle it and I'm now at a point where I'm pushing the coaches a bit more. I'm OK to fail now which is great so we're trying to make that practice a bit harder because I can take a little fall now whereas a year or so ago, any more damage was really traumatic.
My daughter wants a trophy party so she can wear a party dress. My children have not seen me win a tournament, so that's a huge motivator for me. I had a small sample size of a successful week in Türkiye and I love the satisfaction of the work you're doing working and knowing that you're doing the right things and getting some validation with results. That's hugely satisfactory and I crave more of that which drives me towards working on the right things in the right way. Going well and going well again is something I really want to be able to do.
Looking for starts and invites is something that I'm really eager to do and that top ten in Türkiye gets me into this week. Hopefully I can sort of try and get a few more invites off the back of it and give myself a chance of working my way back. It's obviously a long way back I've just got to keep doing what I am. I know I'm progressing and hopefully it's just a matter of time.
I feel like my potential is a lot bigger mentally than it was even when I was playing well. I feel like the stuff I'm doing now is so much further down the road that more avenues have opened up mentally to be able to go about things in a different way or more consistent way or in a way that challenges myself a bit more. I'm practising in ways I've never practised before and that's what gives me belief that I can return to be a better golfer than I was before.
I want to get my card back, that's my goal. I think that's probably pretty obvious. The result in Turkey has obviously given me a nice few points. But it's a fifth of the job. I've got a long way to go to be able to do it but that's the aim. Anything beyond that would be a bonus. The hard thing is that I'm relying on other people to give Chris Wood an invite this week. What if those invites dry up and what if those invites don't come? Then I'm stuck. But if I can give myself some form of category to make next year even a bit easier, then that's not quite as good, but it's a step in the right direction.
I've been starting to talk a bit more about my struggles I've been through the last few years. I've done a few interviews with people asking where I've been and since I did the first one where I felt I was ready to speak a bit more it's really helped. I'm absolutely delighted to be able to feel like that because a few years ago being able to talk about my struggles felt a long way off. I now feel really comfortable with what's happened.
News
Chris Wood birdied the 72nd hole to seal his maiden HotelPlanner Tour victory at the Italian Challenge Open at Golf Nazionale.
